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Daniel Ellsberg

        A native of Chicago, raised in Detroit, Michigan, Daniel Ellsberg served as a company commander in the Marine Corps for two years, then completed a doctorate in economics at Harvard in 1962. He joined the RAND Corporation's Economics Department as an analyst, and in 1964 was recruited to serve inside the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Following two years in Vietnam for the State Department, Ellsberg eventually returned to RAND.
        At RAND, Ellsberg discovered documents that proved that the involvement of the U.S. in the war in VietNam was deliberately escalated, counter to the government's public statements. Unable to convince sypathetic U.S. Senators to reveal the documents on the Senate floor, Ellsberg, with the assistance of Anthony Russo, copied and finally leaked the documents to Neil Sheehan at The New York Times. The newspaper made headlines around the world in June 1971 when the 'Pentagon Papers' – a 7,000-page, top-secret study of decision-making about VietNam – were released to the public through The New York Times and The Washington Post.

        Heroic 'whistle-blower' Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers set in motion a chain of events that included a landmark Supreme Court decision, the arrest and trial of Ellsberg, the crimes of Watergate, and the end of the Nixon presidency and of the Vietnam War. The charges against Ellsberg were dismissed in 1973 after it was discovered that President Nixon had authorized White House aides to burglarize Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in an attempt to discredit him. Conspirator Charles Colson was convicted in the Ellsberg burglary, serving seven months in prison; fellow conspirators John Ehrlichman and G. Gordon Liddy were convicted only in connection with the WaterGate burglary.